


Memories

by dayevsphil, intoapuddle



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-12 23:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21484252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dayevsphil/pseuds/dayevsphil, https://archiveofourown.org/users/intoapuddle/pseuds/intoapuddle
Summary: Memories can be flawed, but Dan definitely thinks he remembers their first kiss correctly. Phil thinks otherwise.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 33
Kudos: 408





	Memories

London looks terrifying and amazing at the same time, from this high up.

Dan watches Phil’s hand fidget in his lap and takes it. The tremors slow down as Phil looks back at him. Heights never have been Phil’s favourite. 

“You’re always so chill,” Phil says, the same mixture of awe and frustration as when he can’t make Dan jump out of his skin. “Doesn’t it freak you out being up so high?”

They aren’t nearly as high up as they’re going to be when they reach the top, but Dan elects not to point that out. Instead, he shifts closer with a grin.

“You were the one that took me to the Manchester Eye that time,” Dan says. “You did this to yourself.”

He squeezes Phil’s hand and runs his thumb over the back of it. Phil visibly calms. He keeps looking at Dan, probably just so he isn’t looking down, but if Dan wants to pretend that it’s because Phil can’t keep his eyes off him, nobody needs to know.

“In my defense, I didn’t think that would be the thing we’d make a tradition of,” Phil huffs, free hand tapping erratically against Dan’s knuckles. “We did a lot of other, much less terrifying things.”

“Cloud twenty three,” Dan remembers, watching everything below them get smaller and smaller the higher they go. “You really like a view for someone that’s scared of heights.”

Phil elbows Dan’s side with a put off expression. It makes Dan smile. That means that Phil feels comfortable enough to at least make some movement.

“That’s not what I meant,” Phil huffs.

“What did you mean, then?”

“Why couldn’t you have kissed me at Starbucks?” Phil complains, knocking the side of his foot against Dan’s. “I wouldn’t have to fear for my life when we try to do something sappy.”

“Oh, shut up,” Dan laughs, squeezing Phil’s hand. “You love it.”

Phil hums. For a moment, he actually looks out the window. It isn’t long before he looks back into Dan’s eyes, but there isn’t anything about Phil’s expression that indicates that he’s scared, really. It is the silence that tells the tale.

“Besides,” Dan says, because he really wants to keep Phil talking, “you made the first move. I wouldn’t have kissed you then if you hadn’t.”

Phil blinks, twice, and shakes his head. “You’re joking. Surely it wasn’t so long ago that you forget what happened, Daniel.”

Dan mock imitates Phil’s reaction.

“I’m not joking. And I do remember, Philip.”

“Okay,” Phil says in that tone where he clearly doesn’t believe Dan and isn’t going to pretend to. He slides his hand out of Dan’s and shifts a bit so their thighs and shoulders are no longer touching. Dan sulks a bit and tries to follow him, but Phil holds up his hand and laughs. “Okay, so, explain it to me like I’m stupid. If I was sitting all the way over here, how did _I_ make the first move?”

“You’re asking me to recreate our first kiss?” Dan laughs. “Really? Alright.”

He rolls his shoulders back and stretches his back exaggeratedly. He doesn’t miss the small smile on Phil’s face.

“I’m you, right? So I, AmazingPhil, who clearly had the upper hand in this situation in every way possible--”

Phil only needs to give him a look for Dan to pause.

“You’re holding on to that?” Dan asks, half-joke, half-’do we need to talk?’.

Phil shakes his head and waves a dismissive hand. “If that’s all you’ve got, then yeah.”

Dan rolls his eyes.

“It wasn’t just that,” he relents. “It’s hard to explain, though. It was more like a vibe than you actually doing something, you know?”

Phil raises a suspicious eyebrow.

“You looked at me like you wanted to eat me alive, mate,” Dan says, dead-pan.

“First of all,” Phil says, and he even taps at his index finger like he’s counting off on them. Dan finds it endearing, but he refuses to let his expression soften before he’s won the argument. “A vibe? Vibe check, I’m not a cannibal.”

“That’s - not even a little -”

“Secondly,” Phil says, acting like Dan hasn’t spoken, “if we’re talking about looks we were giving each other all day, do I have to remind you of the puppy eyes?” 

Phil does what Dan assumes is an imitation of the ‘puppy eyes’, but he just looks wounded and scared like a deer.

Dan scrunches his nose.

“If I looked at you like that I’m not surprised if you wanted to end my suffering right then and there,” he says.

Phil only leans into it, looking even more scared and wounded. Dan feels an impulse to smush Phil’s face with his hand but he thinks better of it.

“Stop,” he laughs instead. “I’m just saying, you were really giving me the ‘fuck me’-eyes.”

“Well, okay, but do you blame me?” Phil laughs, the weird deer expression dropping. “I still don’t think that counts as making a move when I was literally biting at you in the shops and you didn’t feel the urge to kiss me then.”

Remembering that day falls like a fog in Dan’s chest. Not the scary kind of fog, not at all. It is the kind of fog that comes in the early hours of the morning when nobody else is awake and all you can feel is this quiet peacefulness. Phil must see that on his face, because his expression softens. The white flag has been raised.

“I did,” Dan admits. “There wasn’t a moment after I found you on the train platform where I didn’t want to kiss you.”

The weight of the words hang between them until they make a gagging noise at the same time.

“Disgusting,” Phil says, but he leans forward, resting his head on Dan’s shoulder. “We were disgusting.”

“Yeah,” Dan says. 

A beat.

“You want me to kiss you right now, don’t you?”

Phil huffs a laugh, his breath warm against Dan’s upper arm even through the layers between them. Maybe it’s just Dan’s imagination, remembering how Phil laughing against his bare skin feels, but he swears he’s getting goosebumps just from the phantom sensation. 

“Yeah,” Phil says, pressing a soft kiss to Dan’s arm before he pulls back a bit. His eyes are crinkly with happiness, deep lines that weren’t there that first time but that Dan is always so happy to see. “I always want you to kiss me. We’re still absolutely disgusting, aren’t we?”

Dan cups Phil’s cheek and Phil rests his forehead against the side of Dan’s face. The motion is so well practiced they don’t even need to think about it, now. They just slot into place like pieces of a two piece puzzle.

“We are,” Dan agrees.

He tilts Phil’s head up and looks into his eyes.

“I held you like this, didn’t I?”

Phil smiles. Dan thinks he can see a faint blush make an appearance on that pale skin.

“You did,” Phil says. “Bossy as always.”

It shocks a laugh out of him.

“Shut up, I’m trying to be sweet here.”

“Sure. Sorry. Carry on.”

Dan leans down and kisses him. He can’t stop himself. Not when Phil is just as big of an idiot now as he was then. Not when he loves him even more than he ever imagined he could ever love another person. Phil’s lips are soft against his, and hungry all the same.

As they pull away, Phil lets out a big breath.

“If we were really recreating the moment, you’d be rock hard right now,” Dan says.

Phil slaps Dan’s thigh.

“I wasn’t rock hard,” he argues.

“Yes, you were,” Dan says. “I should know. I was staring at your crotch any chance I got.”

“Well, you--”

Dan takes hold of Phil’s hand. “Hey, look,” he says. “We’re at the top.”

Today is not the best day for a go on a ferris wheel, really. The sky is grey and one of the windows has bird poop on it, but it isn’t really about that. It is about those long stretches of city and the swooping sensation in Dan’s gut when he looks far enough. But, most importantly, it is about Phil.

“I’d rather not look, if it’s all the same to you,” Phil says, toying with Dan’s fingers like he can’t settle them.

“Please don’t say something like me being prettier than the view,” Dan sighs. He can only fake gag so many times on one ferris wheel.

“Well, looking at you doesn’t make me want to puke,” Phil says. “So by process of elimination, you’re the better option.”

“Romantic,” Dan says flatly.

Phil might not want to see London from here, but Dan kind of does. He likes the feeling of being on top of the world that he gets from skyscrapers and mountains and holding Phil’s hand. The city lights twinkle further out than Dan expects, every time, and it’s so bizarre to think about how many people are just walking around so far below his feet. 

“I don’t remember you looking at Manchester this much,” Phil teases, pressing his lips to Dan’s cheek. 

It only takes their eyes meeting for Phil to know what Dan is thinking. He is thinking, _‘I didn’t care where we were or what we were doing on that day. All I wanted was to spend time with you.’_

“Yeah,” Phil answers to nothing, quiet like a whisper.

“Yeah,” Dan agrees. He smiles, and then laughs when Phil reaches up to poke at his cheek. “‘Scuse me, hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times. Leave my face alone.”

“It’s a good face,” Phil says, pinching lightly at Dan’s cheek instead.

“That is not an improvement.”

“Gotta keep you looking at me somehow,” Phil jokes. He stops poking and prodding at Dan’s soft cheek and just runs his thumb gently over it for a moment, biting his lip like he’s trying not to grin. Dan hates that he feels himself melt, despite knowing exactly what Phil is doing. “There they are. Puppy eyes.”

The joke is on the tip of his tongue, but Dan swallows it. He can let Phil have one moment, he thinks. It is entirely selfish, anyway, because despite his protests he never feels more precious than he does when Phil says things like that.

But- still. The joke is right there.

The puppy eyes must have faded because Phil rolls his eyes.

“Just say it.”

“Can’t believe I’ve spent the last ten years of my life with a fucking furry,” Dan says in a rush, followed by a frankly embarrassing hyena-like laugh.

Phil shakes his head with a smile as Dan raises his eyebrows at him, challenging him to say something back.

“Feel better?” is all Phil says.

“Yes,” Dan says honestly. “I literally could not help myself, mate.”

“You’re an idiot,” Phil tells him, but he’s still smiling.

They’re descending again, now, slowly. Dan has to admit that this part always makes him feel a little wistful. He just wants to stay suspended in the air with Phil for as long as possible. Still, he supposes that Phil would have a breakdown eventually, and they’d both end up wanting to jump, but. Metaphorically. 

Metaphorically, he’d like to stay at the top of the wheel forever.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!
> 
> reblog on [tumblr](https://intoapuddle.tumblr.com/post/189158283008/memories-co-written-by-intoapuddle-and) | retweet on [twitter](https://twitter.com/intoapuddle/status/1196594318380851200)


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